Dear friend of the parks,
Did you see our electronic communication about our $45,000 in savings per our new office lease taking advantage of the COVID-19 market? Well, we have more exciting news!
In honor of our 45th anniversary, an anonymous donor has made a $45,000 matching grant challenge to show some love for Chicago’s parks and Friends of the Parks.
So many of you have been passionate about Chicago’s parks for years. And as we reminisce about the past and look to the future of our great city’s green and blue spaces, we are intent on building strong bonds with more environmental stewards and “parktivists” like you (and your kids and your grandkids) to live into the statement that Chicagoan Magazine reporter Jory Graham made back in the day: “parks need friends.” Here’s to another 45 years!
In that vein, from Valentine’s Day through Earth Day 2021, we’re making an extra special effort to engage and expand our donors, members, volunteers, and all kinds of friends or the parks to “inspire, equip, and mobilize a diverse Chicago to ensure an equitable park system for a healthy Chicago.” And to invite old and new friends to help us do it.
Might you bestow a little extra love to help us:
Sincerely,
Juanita Irizarry
Executive Director
Did you see our electronic communication about our $45,000 in savings per our new office lease taking advantage of the COVID-19 market? Well, we have more exciting news!
In honor of our 45th anniversary, an anonymous donor has made a $45,000 matching grant challenge to show some love for Chicago’s parks and Friends of the Parks.
So many of you have been passionate about Chicago’s parks for years. And as we reminisce about the past and look to the future of our great city’s green and blue spaces, we are intent on building strong bonds with more environmental stewards and “parktivists” like you (and your kids and your grandkids) to live into the statement that Chicagoan Magazine reporter Jory Graham made back in the day: “parks need friends.” Here’s to another 45 years!
In that vein, from Valentine’s Day through Earth Day 2021, we’re making an extra special effort to engage and expand our donors, members, volunteers, and all kinds of friends or the parks to “inspire, equip, and mobilize a diverse Chicago to ensure an equitable park system for a healthy Chicago.” And to invite old and new friends to help us do it.
Might you bestow a little extra love to help us:
- Position Chicago’s parks and lakefront to benefit from a new presidential administration that is deeply interested in protecting the planet and being thoughtful about equitable environmental policies? Our Last 4 Miles agenda and the city’s urgent need for a comprehensive strategy for sustainable lakefront solutions fit squarely within this opportunity!
- Carry out campaigns alongside local activists to protect parks from pollution and to redevelop brownfields into beautiful green spaces that cooperate with neighborhood-based visions to transition dirty industry toward green jobs? That work against the lakefront CDF pollution dump and General Iron’s relocation next to Rowan Park also requires us to up our capacity to investigate legislative solutions and legal remedies while we also conduct a winter/spring series of car caravan tours of Southeast Side toxic sites and examples of successful conversion of abandoned industrial parcels into environmental assets.
- Innovate and expand our youth environmental education programs despite challenges presented by the pandemic? In 2020, After School Matters invited us to pivot our Dunning Read Conservation Area-based Earth Team program from a summer-only offering at that site to a school year activity engaging kids from across the city and at a plethora of parks, and now we’re planning for summer and fall 2021 together! But our Illinois Department of Natural Resources funding for Nature Along the Lake is at risk because of COVID-19 induced budget shortfalls, so our government support for that is likely to shrink this year.
- Continue advocating for more and truly public parkland at mega-developments? The mayor appointed us to serve on the Lincoln Yards Community Advisory Council which positions FOTP to keep pushing for actual public parkland, not the least of which is the proposed North Branch Park and Nature Preserve. Meanwhile, despite our disappointments, we keep pushing the Obama Foundation on the details of how their “privately-owned public space” on the Obama Presidential Center campus in Jackson Park will manifest as truly accessible and accountable, and we haven’t given up on pressing for replacement parkland in surrounding neighborhoods.
- Motivate and support Park Advisory Councils and other park partners to play local level stewardship and watchdog roles while contributing to FOTP’s policy development on behalf of a healthy park system city-wide? We’ve got Seed Grants rolling out right now to encourage #winterwalks and other park activation as a COVID-19 resilience strategy as we seek to foster more engagement with and sense of ownership of parks to build a broader and stronger network of “parktivists.”
- Prep for in-person and virtual Earth Day alternatives? The Chicago Park District says that they love our 30-year-old collaboration to clean parks on Earth Day, too, and want to find a way to honor it somehow despite pandemic social-distancing requirements for a second year in a row.
Sincerely,
Juanita Irizarry
Executive Director